The rules

Running from warrants and parents, Cody takes to the road. But not every girl is willing to play his game indefinitely.

Eighteen-year-old Cody Jackson, having fled Wisconsin where a judge had issued an arrest warrant, was looking for yet another girl in the summer of 2014.

Just in the last year, he’d had brief relationships with a steady succession of teens and young women from at least five states – Wisconsin, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire and Colorado. He’d traveled around the country with some of them. Two had given birth to his children.

Then he found Andrea, a 17-year-old who lived in Pueblo, Colorado. It was a random encounter.

Andrea had agreed to be wingman-like support for her friend who’d arranged a meeting with Cody through MeetMe.com. But Cody ended up liking Andrea better than his original choice. He told Andrea he wanted to get to know her more.

She agreed to meet him at a park on a Saturday. She brought along her 5-year-old brother and a nephew.

Andrea told Cody she had a boyfriend. Despite that, Cody managed to steer the conversation to sex. Cody told her that if they had sex, she would be his 26th sex partner in the previous year and a half.

Andrea found Cody to be sweet. And, she said: “He gave a damn. He cared about what was going on in my life.”

Not long after, on July 28, 2014, Andrea and her mother argued because she wanted to spend the night in Colorado Springs, about 45 miles away, with her new boyfriend, Cody.

Andrea took some clothes, a toothbrush, a curling iron and a hair straightener, and got into a pickup with Cody. They drove away.

At 11 p.m., Andrea’s mother called 911. A sheriff’s deputy then called Andrea on her cellphone. Andrea said it was her choice. That she should be able to stay with her boyfriend.

The deputy then told Cody the girl would be classified as a runaway, and he would face charges.

Cody told the deputy his record was “clean” and that they weren’t hiding. He said they were staying at a Motel 6 in Colorado Springs.

An officer who went there didn’t find them.

Cody and Andrea had fled.

In a Chevrolet Silverado pickup paid for by his father, Cody and Andrea then clocked some 2,000 miles meandering across the country, through Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Ohio. They stopped only to eat and stay in cheap hotels.

His father continued to send money.

Cody didn’t have a destination. He just drove until he stopped.

He stopped in Kansas City where, concerned police would be looking for his Silverado, Cody decided to stash it in storage. With his father Argil’s help, he bought a used Infiniti to drive around town. The car had tinted windows.

Cody, again, became increasingly controlling. He instituted his usual rules: Andrea wasn’t allowed to look out the vehicle’s window. She wasn’t allowed to leave the hotel room. She could only watch certain TV shows, then no TV at all. She had to be in the bathroom with him when he took a shower.

Andrea, a self-described “tough girl who can take about anything,” would not back down from physical confrontations with Cody. She defended herself. But that would often be “a turn on for him,” she said, “and it would lead to whatever he wanted.”

She stayed.

In early August 2014, Melanie, the mother of Cody’s first child, took a bus from Wisconsin to meet the pair in Missouri. Cody said he needed Melanie around because he felt his relationship with Andrea was “going south.”

Maranda – who met Cody in Florida and later became his housemate in Colorado – had stayed behind in Colorado, taking care of Cody’s German shepherd, Kimber. In mid-August 2014, she packed up a U-Haul full of furniture from the house, and with the dog, drove to Missouri.

Cody told her to meet him, Melanie and Andrea at a Motel 6 in Kansas City.

All four stayed in the same room. The arrangement was unconventional, though everyone was aware of who was in charge, and what was taking place.

When Cody had sex with Andrea, he would send the other two out of the room.

Maranda and Cody would have time to themselves – he termed it “alone time” – in the pickup.

Cody wasn’t interested in sex with Melanie. Instead, she was responsible for keeping the other girls in line. She was the one who made sure they didn’t break Cody’s rules or didn’t go somewhere Cody didn’t want them to.

All three never knew when Cody might demand something or scold them.

Cody once got mad at Maranda for watching a commercial for wrestling because it featured muscular men, and he felt inferior. He got mad when she looked at other men at a Walmart.

He even got mad at Andrea for looking at Maranda when she was supposed to be looking at Melanie.

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By Aug. 20, 2014, they were back on the road again. On Aug. 22, Melanie checked into Room 221 at a Red Roof Inn in Blue Ash, Ohio. She paid in cash.

The night of Aug. 27, Cody said he was going out to look at houses where the four of them could stay. He left Andrea, Maranda and Melanie in the hotel room.

They weren’t supposed to talk to each other.

Cody sent a text message to Maranda at 9:52 p.m.: “And don’t be talking in that f-----g room.”

“We aren’t talking,” she texted back.

But Andrea and Maranda knew Cody had not gone to look at houses. He had driven to Kentucky to see another girl.

At 9:46 p.m., Maranda texted him: “What you doing tonight”?

“Not you,” he replied.

That night, Andrea had finally had enough.

“I looked at Maranda (and said), ‘Screw this – he’s screwing around on me. Me and him are done,’” Andrea later explained to police: “Once is OK. If I piss you off that badly to where you go out and do that, whatever. I’ll put it behind me. You do it twice – even if it’s the same girl – and I’m done.”

When the two girls decided it was time to go, Melanie said she wouldn’t leave with them. But she said she wouldn’t call Cody immediately to tell him they’d gone.

That’s when they fled, eventually dodging him and calling 911 from a nearby parking garage.

Enraged, Cody was driving around in his pickup, looking for them. But police found them first.

He called Maranda on her cellphone as she and Andrea sat in a police car. Cody said something that sounded to Andrea like: “If I catch you guys, you’re going to be in a body bag.”

After 1 a.m. on Aug. 28, after the girls had spoken to police, Cody repeatedly called Maranda, using two different cellphones. In a half-hour span beginning at 1:15 a.m., he called her at least 33 times.

At 2:18 a.m., he started sending a series of text messages. Each one was automatically signed “<3 taken <3.”

2:18:49: “You have three seconds to answer the phone”

2:18:57: “Tell andrea to f-----g call me now!”

2:18:59: “Cause I didn’t meet up with any girl!!”

2:19:02: “I will have your phone number traced and I’ll be there and it’ll be 10 times worse then it is right now!”

2:19:04: “I’ll bring every f-----g person I know!”

2:19:06: “Don’t make the wrong decision I’m tell(ing) you right now!”

2:19:08: “Your gonna make this a lot worse then it needs to be I suggest you answer me.”

2:19:10: “I will find you and it’s gonna be worse then if you just come forward.”

Blue Ash police eventually located Cody’s Silverado, pulled him over and questioned him. He denied holding Andrea and Maranda against their will.

Police didn’t arrest him. Andrea was listed as a runaway by Pueblo, Colorado authorities, and no warrant had been issued for Cody’s arrest.

Five days later, Wisconsin Rapids police handled a new runaway complaint.

Jade, who had lost her virginity to Cody when she was younger, had left Wisconsin with him.